One of the things that always bothers me about these discussions is that many people talk about "the rich and the poor" as if that was all there was to it; as if there were some sharp dividing line with everybody on THIS side "Poor" and everybody on THAT side "rich".
It is WAY more complicated than that.
There are many levels of "poor", many levels of "rich", and many levels in between.
1. Bill Gates, George Soros, John and Teresa Hines-Kerry, Oprah: The Ultra-Rich.
2. Roger Milliken, and other hard-working industrialists worth hundreds of millions: the Very Rich.
3. Successful medium-scale businesspeople worth tens of millions. The semi-Rich.
4. People worth 1 to 9 million overall, including a lot of retirees and low/mid level business owners, and those with incomes in the 100's of thousands annually: the moderately wealthy.
5. Small business owners, most professionals, many retirees: people with an income around 75-200k.
6. Technicians, skilled labor, successful salesmen, lower-end professionals... income 40-100k annually, but often with a lot of debt. They have their heads above water, but its a narrow margin for most.
7. Semi-skilled labor, less successful salesmen, lots of blue-collar factory workers... 20-50k a year. They've got both ends meeting in the middle but they can't get 'em tied... the "Working poor" in many cases.
8. Unskilled labor, low-end blue-collar, clerks, etc... 15-30k a year. Barely surviving, definitely "working poor".
9. Welfare and food stamps.
10. Homeless.
There are major differences between the Ultra or Very Rich, and the "merely" rich or Moderately Wealthy. If I recall rightly, Teresa Hines-Kerry only paid about 15% taxes annually, or so it was reported a few years ago, since most of her income was capital gains and she has the best tax lawyers and accountants in the country on her side.
OTOH the moderately wealthy, mid-range business owners and professionals are often paying 40% total in taxes, because their income may not be mostly capital gains and they don't have the top-gun tax lawyers and accountants that the Ultra-rich have.
The middle-class gets the big squeeze, IMO.
Then you have the technicians, auto mechanics, lower-end computer gurus, forklift drivers and truckers, etc... they're making it, but the margin by which their head is above water is slim. A lot of these folks get lumped together with the Welfare crowd and this isn't right, as most such folks work very hard indeed and take little or no Gov't handouts. They can't pay more taxes because their margin of success is so slender.
IMO, the Ultra-Rich and Very Rich do indeed get richer regardless. The positions and prosperity of the moderately wealthy and middle-class professionals and business owners is often more precarious than most realize, and they get squeezed hard. Most of the blue-collar working class don't really benefit from "wealth redistribution" because they take pride in being self-supporting and avoid gov't handouts as a matter of pride.
A lot of retirees, just to mention a group that is often forgotten in these discussions, soak up a lot of public funds in the form of medical bennies and programs and social security.... some of them need it, but some of them have a million-dollar portfolio and STILL play the system for every freebie they can get. IMO we need to quit pretending SS/Medicare is "owed because you payed into it", admit that the money has been put in General Fund and spent, admit that SS/Medicare is a form of Welfare, and quit paying millionaire-retirees out of a nearly bankrupt system.